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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Sport
Jacob Uitti

‘The food is bad, everything is bad’: what it feels like to be on a hopeless NBA team

The Washington Wizards are about to complete their seventh losing season in a row.
The Washington Wizards are about to complete their seventh losing season in a row. Photograph: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The business of sports is about winning. But that, of course, doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of losers out there. That’s most evident every year in the NBA around the first day of spring. With about a dozen games left in the regular season, it’s obvious which teams are also-rans – and they have probably known that for some time. But when a team are losing and losing often, how does that affect the roster? How do the players deal with the constant lows?

“When you lose,” says former NBA All-Star Xavier McDaniel, “it’s like getting a life sentence. I knew for me, losing, it started me to drink beer. Losing created a lot of bad habits. Losing can be a disease. We were losing so much [my rookie season] that by January I was drinking beer!”

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